Queen of the Web

Queen Elizabeth has put Queen Victoria’s complete journals online. (Well, in collaboration with Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and ProQuest.) The 141 journals, sourced from the Royal Archives, chronicle Victoria’s life from the age of thirteen to eighty-one. The monarch was a faithful and articulate correspondent, and while the content is hardly what one might term juicy, there are certainly plenty of personal revelations, domestic details, and opportunities for analysis. (If you can read her handwriting, that is—not every journal is transcribed.)

On this day in 1837, the soon-to-be queen recorded,

Wrote a letter to dear Uncle Leopold. Walked. Wrote my journal. Dressed (as though I was going to an evening party.) ... Saw Dr. Clark. Played on the piano. Wrote. At 7 to 4 we dined.